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AGENCY TESTIMONY
DEP's budget, staffing levels, and capital plan
0:09:14
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117 sec
Commissioner Aggarwala provides an overview of DEP's expense budget, capital plan, and staffing levels. He highlights the department's financial position and workforce challenges.
- DEP's expense budget for FY 2026 is $1.641 billion, with modest new needs including environmental impact studies and stormwater resilience mapping.
- The ten-year capital plan is $37 billion, with an additional $3.8 billion allocated for critical mandated work and wastewater treatment plant repairs.
- DEP's authorized headcount is 6,307 for FY 2026, with a current 13% vacancy rate.
Rohit Aggarwala
0:09:14
I'll give a quick overview of DEP's expense and capital budgets.
0:09:18
As of the FY twenty six preliminary budget, DEP's expense budget is 1,641,000,000.000.
0:09:24
This reflects as you pointed out a modest set of new needs that include roughly $2,000,000 to pursue the environmental impact statement for the indirect source rule on which we heard.
0:09:37
And and again I wanna thank council member Aviles for her leadership on on that important issue.
0:09:43
2,000,000 or $4,000,000 for storm water resilience mapping as part of the city of YES, a new responsibility that DEP has as part of that rezoning and legislation.
0:09:55
And roughly half a million dollars for an expansion of our flood sensing network which includes flood net but is now going beyond it.
0:10:04
The backbone of any organization is its workforce.
0:10:07
I'm tremendously proud of the work DEP staff perform each day.
0:10:11
Our authorized head count totals 63.07 for FY '20 '6 which is just 27 positions fewer than FY '25.
0:10:21
That reduction represents grant funded positions that are added to the budget each fiscal year.
0:10:27
So in fact it's pretty much the same.
0:10:30
We currently have roughly 5,600 employees which does imply a 13% vacancy rate.
0:10:36
It's also worth noting that roughly a thousand of our staff work north of the city in our watershed and our police.
0:10:44
I'm happy to report that with this new capital plan, we've received an additional $3,800,000,000 to address critical mandated work as well as a much needed as much needed state of good repair for our wastewater treatment plants.
0:10:57
Much of this is for complying with mandates related to ambient water quality and in fact, chairman, the lion's share of that 3,800,000,000.0 is for the Newtown Creek project and I wanna thank you for your kind words about our team's work there.